Doesn't Mean That I Wasn't Brave
by Gharial
Summary: Ba Sing Se isn't kind, and it isn't safe, but it's home, and they'll protect it with everything they've got. Superhero AU.
1. an unremarkable conversation

**A/N:** Cross-posting from AO3. Just a series of glimpses into the lives of a handful of teen superheroes.

* * *

"You know, sometimes I'm jealous," Yue tells him one night, the two of them in costume, side by side and dangling their legs off the rooftop like kids sitting at the edge of a pool. "Because you had someone to teach you how to use your powers."

"If you want me to be honest," Zuko says, not looking at her, "I think I would have preferred figuring them out on my own."

"Yeah," Yue says, not looking at him either, "I think I would too."


	2. a visitor unaccustomed to tea

"You're the Dragon of the West."

Iroh doesn't startle at the sudden voice behind him, just takes a second cup out. "I used to be, yes." He turns around; the boy is standing awkwardly near the window, mouth drawn in a tight line and hands hovering at his sides like he's not sure what to do with them. "Please, take a seat, we'll have some tea."

The boy sits down at the chair closest to the window, staying silent as Iroh pours the tea for them both.

Halfway through his cup (he doesn't seem inclined to savor it, but Iroh can tell he's trying to pace himself) he finally looks up and demands, "But what are you doing _here_?"

"This city has far too many criminals and not _nearly_ enough tea shops," Iroh says, not _entirely_ joking, and the boy makes a noise of frustration.

"But you could have _taken_ the city," the boy says, making a wide gesture with one hand. "I've heard about you, you were in position to take control of _all of Ba Sing Se_ -"

"And then what?" Iroh asks, setting his tea down and meeting the boy's eye. "I would have had to hold it as well. That is no easy task, and I had many enemies to begin with. I would have never had a moment of rest or safety again. That was not the life I wanted to live."

The boy scowls down at his tea, and Iroh can tell he still doesn't understand.


	3. slow and steady

The Avatar can fly. Like, _actually_ fly, Toph's heard him pass overhead and never once touch down on anything connected to the ground. And yet here he is, prancing around and making contact with the ground, cars, the sides of buildings (not to mention chattering like a parrot-monkey) and apparently not realizing he's letting her keep track of where he is-

Or maybe he does, and he's _letting her keep track of where he is._ If that's it, it's nice of him. Really stupid, she reflects as she hits him in the side with a chunk of pavement, but nice.

"Ow," he says, touching down on a much higher ledge on the building across the street and holding his side in a way that suggests that hit hurt more than he wants to let on. "You have really good aim."

"I know," she says, and flings another piece of the street at him. He dodges that one, and takes a bit longer to set down this time.

"I just wanna ask you something," the Avatar says, and his heartbeat is sincere enough that she pauses in the middle of preparing her next attack to cock her head at him. "Why do you do this?" he asks. Not angry, not frustrated, just... curious.

She hooks a thumb over her shoulder at the bank she just robbed. "This?"

He nods once.

"It's fun," she says with a shrug.

"That's all?" he asks, somehow not actually sounding disappointed despite those being the most 'I'm disappointed in you and your choices" words ever. The new Avatar is weird like that.

"Yeah, what were you expecting, some kind of tragic backstory? You want me to open up and talk about my _feelings_?" She flings some of a car at him just in case he's under the impression they're getting chummy.

"Maybe a little," he admits, dodging with a wince- his side must be getting to him.

"Too bad, 'cause that's none of your business, Twinkletoes." Not that it's really what she'd call _tragic_ anyway.

"I guess it's not," he says, and when she takes another shot at him he doesn't set back down on anything solid, but doesn't make any immediate move either. She decides this is a good place to cut the conversation off, and pulls the earth over her so she can make her getaway underground.

She's pretty sure she hears a "bye, Bandit" just as the pavement closes up behind her, and she snorts.

As usual, she drops the money somewhere the cops will find it before she goes home.


	4. an origin story

_It was a gift from the spirits_ , they tell Yue when she's old enough to wonder about it. She thinks that's fantastic, that the spirits thought she was worthy of a gift like her life and her powers, and she devours all the stories about them she can get her hands on in the hopes that she'll learn what it was they saw in her.

What she learns, once she's old enough to make up her own mind about the things she reads instead of accepting what grown-ups tell her they mean, is this:

Spirits don't give gifts.

They reward faithful service; they help those it's in their interest to help; they trade favors; they make wagers and pay up if they lose.

But they don't give gifts.

Which makes her life more of a loan than anything, really. They saved her life, and someday they're going to come to reclaim it, for what reason she can't fathom.

But, Yue figures as she pulls together her costume for the night, it's not _precisely_ a loan, so maybe if she does enough good the spirits will consider it an investment instead.


	5. stating the obvious

Sokka isn't okay with it.

He isn't okay with how he takes the long way around certain parts of town. He isn't okay with how he gets nervous when he _doesn't_ see arson in the news for a few days. He isn't okay with how sometimes people disappear, and _sometimes_ they show up again with new burn scars, and nobody ever asks. He isn't okay with the fact that the women's shelter Suki works at has gotten bomb threats.

But he has a dad who's a cop and a Gran-Gran who grits her teeth when she hands over the money every month and a little sister who _seethes_ every time she sees someone wearing red and black, and he used to have a mom, too.

So Sokka keeps his mouth shut and his head down and makes promises to himself about _someday_ and hopes the superheroes can do their jobs before then.


	6. someone else's first try

Mai would be lying if she said she's not bored of it.

It had been fun for a long time. Back when they were little kids, people had been scared of Azula because she'd known how to leverage being _daddy's little girl_. It had felt like a lot of power at the time, and Azula had let Mai and Ty Lee bask in the edges of it.

By the time just being _Ozai's daughter's friend_ had started getting stale, Azula had figured out how to make the grown-ups scared of her because she was _Azula_. She was a pyrokinetic prodigy, and that had definitely been how she'd gotten everyone's attention, but Mai knew that what made people _fear_ her was the way she used words like lesser humans used knives to the throat. It wasn't something Mai would ever be able to replicate, but she could still learn from it.

By the time just being _Azula's friend_ was getting old, Mai had learned how to use knives the way Azula used words, and people were fearing her on _her_ own merits too.

But now it's boring, for _real_ , and there are no new thrills in sight. (Unless Azula decides she wants to stage a coup, which is something Mai carefully doesn't think about.) After all, there are only so many ways you can burn a building down.

From the way Azula grins as the flames start to peek through the windows of the one they've just set on fire, she's only enjoying it more after all this time, and Ty Lee will never get bored of anything as long as she has her _two bestest friends in the universe!_ around. Mai takes one last look at the white smoke that's starting to pool out of the ground floor windows, sighs dramatically, and turns her back to it, sitting on the railing that Ty Lee's practically climbing for a better view and that Azula's resting her arms on like a dignified little princess surveying her kingdom.

"What's wrong?" Ty Lee asks as Mai pulls out a knife and starts cleaning her fingernails.

"Seen one, seen 'em all," she grunts. Azula makes a little _hmph_ but seems too distracted to launch into a rant about all the _incredibly fascinating_ nuances of arson. It's almost disappointing.

"Your aura's pretty dull," Ty Lee presses.

Mai can feel her staring. "Isn't it always?"

" _Girls_ ," Azula hisses, putting them both on alert.

There's a sharp _crack_ from the building behind her. Mai would think it were something giving way under the heat if it weren't accompanied by a rush of arctic-cold air.

She whirls around to see a thick layer of frost forming on the brick. Azula and Ty Lee are already over the railing, Azula into the ground floor and Ty Lee flipping into a second-story window. Mai heads up, to get a better eye on the exits.

It's like the ice is sucking the life right out of the fire. No, not just the ice- from her new vantage point, what she thought was smoke curling along the ground looks more like _mist_.

There's a smothered burst of blue flames inside on the second floor, noises of rage and concern from Azula and Ty Lee respectively, and then a thick cloud of fog spills out the window, coalescing into the pale, ghostly figure of a girl about their age, colorless except for the bright, sharp blocks of red on her mask. Mai gets her in the right shoulder with a throwing knife, and she staggers in the air, whirling around madly.

She spots Mai and surges forward. The next knife, and the third, go through nothing but mist, and before she can get a fourth in the air the girl pulls her left arm up in a sharp gesture that _traps Mai up to her neck in a block of ice_.

Then there's no girl, just an iced-over warehouse, rapidly approaching sirens, and a swirl of mist disappearing in the wind.

Mai would be lying if she said she's not looking forward to things getting interesting around here.


	7. the quiet after

**A/N:** This chapter has been giving me a lot of trouble. It took me a while to work out the tone, and I'm still not totally happy with it, but sometimes you've just gotta call a thing done and move on- this chapter in particular, I wanted to post right after the last one, for reasons that I think will be obvious :P

* * *

Everything about this is wrong.

She knows- she _knows_ \- how dangerous it is. How many people have died doing this. But she'd be in danger anyway, she told herself. There's nowhere safe in Ba Sing Se. _They've_ made sure of that. So putting on the costume, going looking for trouble- she told herself it wasn't really much worse than sitting at home and just _hoping_ everything would turn out alright eventually. Now, as she leans heavily on the bathroom sink and inspects the wound in her shoulder, she's not so sure.

She still doesn't have a clue about her powers, she realizes as she gingerly prods at the wound, sickeningly aware of the blood that's flowing through her veins and conspicuously not _out_ of them. Her heart is pumping just fine and her arm isn't going numb, but the area around her shoulder, where her powers are pressing down, feels _stagnant_ , like her lungs are full of air but her breathing is shallow. She's _controlling her own blood_. She didn't know she could _do_ that.

She'd really rather focus on the raw pain in her shoulder than the uncomfortable questions forming in her mind about what _else_ she can do.

This was her first night in costume. She'd meant to, to stop a mugging or something, or maybe scare someone away from a girl who was out late- she'd practiced a couple lines, meant to be intimidating and dignified and reassuring all at the same time-

The look in that girl's eyes, the one who'd shot fire at her, had sent every thought of heroics out of her head. She'd just needed to _get out_.

She clutches at the sink and sobs a little. She'd run in without a plan, found herself immediately in over her head, _barely_ gotten away- she feels young and naive and _stupid_. She wants to curl up in her bed and go back to her own life and never stick her nose into anything ever again.

"I'm not doing this for _myself_ ," she reminds the girl bleeding in the mirror.

Her father is risking his life every day in the police force, and her Gran-Gran works herself too hard just to make sure they have the money to get by, and her brother keeps every kid on their block out of trouble, and her _mother_ -

Katara grits her teeth and gets to work on her shoulder.


	8. whoops

**A/N:** I wrote this at 3am last night because I needed fluff.

* * *

There's a new boy working the register at Jin's favorite tea place. He's cute, with scruffy black hair and piercing gold eyes and a perpetual pout. ("Scowl," her friend Suki says, but what does she know.) She does a double take when she first sees him, and then has to take a couple deep breaths while she waits in line because he's just so _unfair._

"Hi," she says when its her turn to order, as smooth as she can manage. "Never seen you around before."

He looks a little confused, and oh _no,_ that's cute _too._ "Well, I just started working here."

She rests her chin in her hand, leaning forward interestedly. "Ooh, lemme guess, you wanna learn all Mushi's tea secrets?" That's a real thing. Mushi insists that the only secret ingredient is love, but there's no way he isn't packing some kind of ancient forbidden tea-brewing technique.

His face scrunches up like he's eating sour candy. "No, I'm just- I needed a job, and- he's my uncle."

She's super tempted to make a joke about tea nepotism. "Yeah, I gotcha. It's always nice to have family looking out for you."

Okay, even _she_ can admit that the face he makes is _way_ closer to a scowl than a pout. "Please order," he says flatly. "There's a line behind you."

Jin whirls around. Half a dozen strangers, and Suki, are giving her various unamused _looks._ She can't remember what kind of tea she drinks.

"Um!" she squeaks, spinning back around. "Daily special!" Ugh, no, words, _why?_ "Please!" Her face is _so_ red right now, she's going to _die-_

She doesn't die. She gets her tea and puts _all_ of her change in the tip jar and doesn't start wailing into her hands until she's a little ways down the street and Suki has gently pried the cup of (delicious, perfect) tea out of her grip so she doesn't accidentally drop it.

"Did you _see_ his face when I brought up family?" she moans. "I'm such a _jerk!"_

"You've made worse first impressions," Suki says, completely unsympathetic.

"He's going to hate me forever!"

"You met him five minutes ago."

"I can never show my face in the Jasmine Dragon again!"

"I'm not buying your tea for you."

Jin takes her face out of her hands to glare at Suki. "You're supposed to be on my side!"

"That's why I'm gonna make you deal with this like a grown-up." She lets that sink in, then exaggeratedly lifts Jin's tea to her mouth for a sip.

Jin snatches the cup out of her hands, giggling despite herself. "Fine."

She'll go back tomorrow.


End file.
